Search This Blog

Books; People; Ideas : These are few of my favourite things. As I live between day-to-day compromises and change-the-world aspirations, this is the chronicle of my journey, full of moments of occasional despair and opportune discoveries, of connections and creations, and, most of all, my quest of knowledge as conversations.

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Education for Employment: What Employers Want

In course of my initial approach to understand India's skills landscape, I have been interviewing a few recruiting managers over the last few days. The issues I came across ranged from wholly predictable to somewhat surprising, underlining not just the drift of the modern workplace but also the unique challenges an Indian recruiting manager are facing.

I am conscious that these conversations are, by no means, representative. I was talking to people from only two specific industries, and it is obviously quite a small sample to draw conclusion about the Indian labour markets. But this was still worth writing about as the starting point of a more complete project I want to embark upon, to understand the interfaces between employment and education.

When I asked my correspondents what their greatest challenges were, the responses were somewhat mixed. Almost everyone talked about, in one way or other, about finding people with right abilities in the numbers they need: A straw poll tells me that only 20% of the people recruited who matched the profile desired by the employers, and there are some compromise being made for the majority of candidates.

However, the definition of 'right abilities' was somewhat surprising: As it turned out, the recruiters may be placing greater emphasis on Communication and Presentation Skills, and 'right attitude', than the technical abilities. The consensus was that while specific technical skills can be taught, communication and behavioural skills are much more difficult to deal with. Indeed, this is where the compromise is being made, people with inadequate communication skills are being recruited because there is no other alternative. There was no consensus, however, on whether this means the technical skills of the recruited candidates are usually adequate: Most of them thought these were inadequate too, but it mattered less, but a few thought they were getting the right level of tech skills.

The recruiting managers cited that the required volume and the urgency of the requirements are far too great for them to be 'perfectionists'. They were also conscious that there is a huge churn - one recruiting manager told me that they have to replace at least 30% of their total workforce every year - which, rather paradoxically, makes them less sensitive to getting the recruitment right. On my suggestion whether they could perhaps reduce the churn by tightening recruitment was mostly met with a rather fatalistic reply: That this is the way of the market and it is unlikely to be changed. Overall, this approach to recruitment might be a reflection of the business model of some industries, which depended on recruitment of lots of people with basic technical skills, but the approach seems to be universal. I talked to one successful business which runs a chain of diagnostic centres, which had quite a similar challenge and a similar approach, though their requirement of technical skills were quite specific and higher compared to an industry like insurance; surprisingly, they also suffer from a high level of churn, perhaps a reflection of the competitive nature of the market.

The idea of churn seemed to be all pervasive - which is not surprising - but this led to surprising conclusions. Most people accepted this as a given, and built recruitment strategies with the assumption that most people they are recruiting will leave the job quite soon. The recruitment focus was therefore based on numbers and not the skills, and communication skills mattered more than technical skills. Piecing all these together, it seemed that someone with a good communication skill can easily secure any job and can command a good salary because of the competitive nature of the market, but high level technical skills mattered much less (which may not be a correct impression, but skewed because of the limited scope of my survey).

The other big issue that came up, surprisingly, is the question of mobility. I perhaps somewhat mistakenly assumed that the issue of mobility has been resolved - post-liberalisation Indians are much more mobile than my own generation - but it still seemed to be an issue. Indeed, there were differences among industries here: The IT recruiters did not think mobility was an issue anymore, but everyone else did. It also seemed that there are some unspoken regional preferences in recruitment, though it was difficult to ascertain whether these were personal preferences of the recruiting managers or a more institutional approach. On the other hand, there was no clear gender preferences: That I even brought up the question offended some of my correspondents.

Indian employers reported spend the least among the BRIC countries in training their staff. Almost everyone, however, seemed to need to prepare the candidates for a significant period of time before they become productive. Despite the complaints about communication skills, the training seemed
to be focused on technical skills rather than communication, partly
because of the attitude that communication skills can't be improved and
partly because of the fear of churn (some respondents, however, perhaps
knowing my background and interests, noted that cross-cultural training
is much needed). Apparently, the overall data (that Indian companies spent least on training) is not representative of the sectors such as IT and Financial Services, which may spend more than other sectors, though the countervailing concerns about churn remains a factor.

One thing everyone agreed upon is that the educational system is failing to meet the requirements of the employers. In the light of the employers' requirements, primarily framed in terms of good communication skills, willingness to travel and commitment to a career, this was somewhat surprising. The levels of technical skills may disappoint the employers, but this is not what they are complaining about most. However, one could perhaps guess that Indian classrooms are hardly the place to develop these 'desired' skills: The culture of teacher-led education (with students never having to present or do an activity), somewhat mono-cultural classrooms and little thought and exposure to the world of work, the average Indian educational institutions usually fall short even on those rather straightforward requirements. This is perhaps the reason for success of the 'finishing school' business in India (a term that invariably cause surprise and derisive laughter among my British colleagues) but none of my correspondents thought that the 'finishing schools' actually work. Their common observation was, perhaps correctly, that the changes needed are fundamental and not just the cosmetic kind that the 'finishing schools' end up providing.

So, what should the schools do? Apart from providing good technical skills, their job seems to be cut out in terms of changing the culture of the classroom, providing wide ranging career counselling and work exposure and allowing cross-regional exchanges and work experience placements. This seems rather obvious, but most schools don't even get to do this. In fact, the recruiting managers thought they keep their academic calendar so busy and their efforts so focused on purely academic pursuits that they miss out on creating even a basic level of student experience. The Indian colleges may not agree to this, and cite their range of extra-curricular activities, but the relative weight of these activities is clearly out of sync with how the employers look at this.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A friend has recently forwarded me a quote from Lord Macaulay's speech in the British Parliament on 2nd February 1835. I reproduce the quote below: "I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
The email requested me to forward me to every indian I know. I was tempted, but there were two oddities about this quote. First, the language, which appeared …

Business gift giving has always been common and contentious at the same time. Business gifts are usually seen as an ‘advertising, sales promotion and marketing communication medium’ (Cooper etal, 1991). Arunthanesetal (1994) points out that such gifting is practised usually for three reasons: (a) in appreciation for past client relationships, placing a new order, referrals to other clients, etc.; (b) in the hopes of creating a positive, first impression which might help to establish an initial business relationship; and (c) giving may be perceived as a quid Pro quo (i.e. returning a favour or expecting a favour in return for something).

The practitioners of gift-giving generally argue that doing business is often an aggregation of personal interactions and relationships, and gift-giving should be seen as a natural way of maintaining and enhancing these relationships. ‘Business gifts, especially one given in the course of the festive season, is …

In an earlier post, I pointed out that the application of 'platform thinking' in education misses the mark, as it fails to understand how value is created in education. Since this apparently contradicts my earlier enthusiasm for the university as a 'user network', this statement needs further explanation.
To start with, Clayton Christiansen's idea that the universities of the Twentieth Century needs to evolve from its current 'value chain' model - wherein its value lies in its processes - to a form of User Network, where its value emanates from its community, still resonates with me. The Value Chain model, with departments, examinations, textbooks and degrees, that we know the university for, is very much a late Nineteenth/ early Twentieth century formulation. And, indeed, one can claim that the universities were always communities, and its value came from being a member of that community rather than its end product - the degrees - for much of history. It …

In most societies today, making profits are accepted as moral, if not especially praiseworthy. This was not as obvious as it appears today – people used to be embarrassed about making a profit not so long ago.

Crazy as it seems today, it is worth thinking why it was so.

Profits, as economists will put it, is the reward for risk-taking, for putting a business enterprise together in the pursuit of an objective. In this definition, remember, profits are not what it is commonly understood to be – the gross middle-line towards the bottom – but a figure net of entrepreneur’s earning [wages for his labour], dividends and interests on borrowed capital, and provisions for building and other physical assets [a sort of rent, offsetting what these assets could have earned if leased out]. This pure profit – surplus – accrues to a business as a reward to its organisation, for the act of entrepreneurship itself.

Economists were divided on how this surplus comes about. The conventional wisdom was, as I …

I wrote a note on Kolkata, the city I come from and would always belong to, in July 2010. Since then, the post attracted many visitors and comments, mostly critical, as most people, including those from Kolkata, couldn't see any future for the city. My current effort, some 18 months down the line, is also prompted by a recent article in The Economist, The City That Got Left Behind, which echo the pessimism somewhat.
I, at least emotionally, disagree to all the pessimism: After all Kolkata is home and I live in the hope of an eventual return. Indeed, some change has happened since I wrote my earlier post: The geriatric Leftist government that ruled the state for more than 30 years was summarily dispatched, and was replaced by a lumpen-capitalist populist government. Kolkata looked without a future with the clueless leftists at the helm; it now looks without hope.
However, apart from bad governance, there is no reason why Kolkata had to be poor and hopeless. It sits right inside …

Buzzwords have disadvantages. Right now, experiential learning is one, and that means we put the label on everything and it stops to mean anything. Also, this means reasonable conversation about experiential learning becomes difficult - at times such as this, either you preach experiential learning or you are traditional, antiquarian and hopelessly out of touch.
But, overlooking the limitations of experiential learning can cause big problems. Experiential Learning does many things - putting practice at the heart of learning is an important paradigm shift - but not everything, and it is important to be aware what it does not do.
Usually, we equate the terms Project-based Learning (the method) with Experiential Learning (the idea) and Learning from Experience (the ideal), treating them as one and the same and using the terms interchangeably. Any talk about distinctive meaning of these terms is usually seen as pedantic, but really represent very different ideas about education.
Learnin…

India's unemployment rate has reached a historical high and the government is panicking. It has rejected and suppressed the report and committed itself to inventing a new set of numbers. Members of the national statistical body have resigned, and the bad job numbers have become one of the worst kept secrets in its modern history.
As the government went down the road of obfuscation, it had also fooled itself believing that everything was fine. Once the statistical reports were questioned, the best explanation that the Head of the apex economic policy-making body could come up with was that Uber and other taxi-hailing companies have created millions of jobs in India. But then, the crisis is anything but hidden - walk on any street in any neighbourhood in any Indian city, and it is likely that you will see a few working-age people loitering, waiting or playing cards or carom in the middle of the day. IMF has recently warned that youth inactivity in India is highest among all develo…

Smart presentations don't mean valuable insights. So it is with the current fad of presenting the vision of an all-new 21st-century education - through presentations, conferences and infographics - style trumps substance all the way through.

For, despite the claims of revolutionary changes in society and the workplace, the neat charts that lay down 21st-century skills next to the 20th-century one's show do not how different they would be, but rather how similar these are projected to be.

We are told that we have arrived at a fundamentally disruptive moment in history and we need new skills. So, we need, for example, communication and critical thinking, learning to learn and a host of other cool things. Indeed, many of those terms are very familiar to the educator: Many of those were around for more than two centuries, ever since the dreams of liberal education were spelt out.

When these slides were presented, I often wondered whether the point about critical thinking meant …

I didn't write for almost three weeks as I was in India. The essence of my work there is to deal with employment creation. Part of my work is pro-bono - a city initiative focused on Industry 4.0 - and the other part is commercial, advising a large Indian corporation on the development of next-generation Skills training programmes. But the sense of crisis regarding unemployment cuts across scale and scope of my work and is a recurrent theme that pops up everywhere.
India has a really big challenge. About 2 million people reach working age every month in India, and even if only half of them are actively seeking employment, the few thousand jobs that the organised sector creates are woefully inadequate. India may be the fastest growing large economy in the world, but demonetisation of 2016 and poorly implemented General Sales Tax (GST) have hit businesses hard and froze up recruitment in many sectors. The widely promoted 'Make in India' initiative - the government's atte…

That governments are so enthusiastically trying to promote start-up cultures, handing out investment grants and building fancy new hubs, would make Milton Friedman turn in his grave: One can anticipate his protest - it is not the business of government to do business!
But then, democracy in its 'for the middle class, by the middle class' incarnation expects the government to be a job creation machine, and when all else fails, the Ministers say 'let start-ups be'! In fact, they celebrate it: In this affair, failure, the hallmark of government programmes, is some sort of credit. It allows the governments to celebrate the doctrine of creative destruction - ever so cool - while destructively creating a self-blaming proletariat, whose revolutions are limited to ventures and whose idea of nirvana is an Exit. There was never a better mantra invented to justify a permanent bureaucracy.
But, at this point, I must stop and make an important distinction. My post is about start-…